Coming up next on MSNBC, further evidence of the link between global warming and the National Rifle Association, which the gun lobby inexplicably continues to deny ...

How reassuring it is for liberals to trot out their various all-purpose boogeymen to blame for whatever frustrates liberals at any given moment.

The NRA has long served in that role for the left, but never so vociferously as in the six months since the massacre at Sandy Hook. And with prospects for more restrictive gun laws dimming by the week, thwarted left-wingers have taken to blaming the NRA for anything tangentially related to guns.

Latest example -- MSNBC weekend host Melissa Harris-Perry, filling in for Rachel Maddow last night, said this about a man shooting himself to death at an airport --

We begin tonight in Texas where this afternoon at the Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, in Terminal B near the ticket counter, a man allegedly fired a gun right there in the airport. He shot up in the ceiling and no one was injured. When security personnel confronted him, the gentleman shot himself and the man was pronounced dead at a local hospital. So, police say the incident was an isolated one, there's no search for additional suspects or anything like that and again, no one else was injured. But it was still very scary for the people in the airport. One witness told the Associated Press there was screaming when the shots were fired. That was Houston today. And this (image shown of sheriff's badge engraved with "Houston 2013 NRA") will be Houston tomorrow. In technically unrelated news, the National Rifle Association is hosting its 142nd convention at George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston. The festivities begin Friday and go all weekend.

Got that -- "technically" the two events aren't related, but the oh so bright lights at MSNBC know better. To them, the connection could not be more obvious. After all, it's called the National "Rifle" Association for good reason and we can safely assume the man who took his life at the airport did not fire bullets from a knife or baseball bat.

Just as the connection between a shooting and the NRA was obvious back in 1999 when the NRA held its annual convention in Denver two weeks after the Columbine massacre in nearby Littleton. As far as liberals were concerned, the NRA was as much to blame as Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. It still infuriates the left that the NRA did not cancel or postpone its convention that year to acknowledge its obvious complicity in the murders at Columbine.

But if the NRA isn't "technically" to blame for that airport shooting in Houston -- wink, wink, nudge, nudge -- why not cast the net of potential culpability even further? Let's start with the people who own and run the airport. While "technically" they aren't responsible for what happened, had they never built this airport to begin with, this incident could not have occurred there. At risk of stating the obvious, a shooting can't occur at an airport ... if the airport doesn't exist.

What about those allegedly blameless airlines? If they don't fly their planes in and out of Bush airport, how many people would be going to the airport at all? Ergo, the airlines are clearly connected to what happened, albeit not in a strictly "technical" sense.

How about the people who manage the Boston Marathon? While they "techically" did not detonate pressure-cookers bombs at the finish line of their race last month, the bombs did explode on a race course they were managing.

Which leads me to the manufacturers of those pressure cookers used in the Boston bombings. While the company that made them isn't "technically" responsible for the horrific bombings, so much misery could have been prevented had the company never made the pressure cookers to begin with.

While I'm on the subject, what about the tens of thousands of American who perish every year in vehicle accidents on our roads? While the Big Three automakers in Detroit and foreign car manufacturers are not "technically" to blame for this, if none of these companies made vehicles to begin with, vehicular homicide would plummet. The logic of this is hard to dispute.

Just as Oliver North's conviction in Iran-Contra was later overturned on a "technicality," though liberals still routinely refer to him as a felon, since they remain unalterably convinced he was among the Cold War's worst criminals.